The 21st Marfield Prize Judges

Caroline Bock

Caroline Bock is the author of THE OTHER BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE (Regal House Publishing, 2026), young adult novels LIE and Before My Eyes (St. Martin’s Press), and the award-winning short story collection Carry Her Home (WWPH). Her short work appears in the Best Microfiction 2026 and many other literary journals. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, where she studied creative writing with Raymond Carver, and holds an MFA in Fiction from the City College of New York. She is the co-president and prose editor at the Washington Writers’ Publishing House in Washington, DC. More about her at www.carolinebockofficialauthor.site

Anne Midgette

Anne Midgette was for 12 years the classical music critic of The Washington Post. Before the Post, she was the first woman to write classical music reviews on a regular basis for The New York Times. She has also written for The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Opera News, The Los Angeles Times, Town & Country, ARTnews, and many other publications. A graduate of Yale University, she started her career as a journalist during the 11 years she lived in Germany, where she wrote about the visual arts, opera, film, and dance, worked as a translator, edited a monthly magazine, and wrote several travel guidebooks. 

She is co-author of the memoirs The King and I, written with Luciano Pavarotti’s manager Herbert Breslin, and My Nine Lives, with the pianist Leon Fleisher. She is working on a historical novel about the woman who built pianos for Beethoven.

Carol Mitchell

Carol Mitchell is the author of the forthcoming short story collection A Good Haunting (Akashic Books 2026), the novel What Start Bad a Mornin’ and of 19 books for children. She is the recipient of several fellowships including from the Cheuse Center for International Writing, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and StoryKnife. Her book reviews and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in several journals. She is an assistant professor at George Mason University in Virginia and is working on a novel.